So awesome that finally a quake game get sthis... but....

don't you think there is potentially going to be some kind of race to the bottom wiht shit maps? If you look at games that run the Cube 1/2 engine (Sauerbraten, Assault Cube) a lot of shit maps are created by community and played endlessly over and over. Often overwhelming the server list with truly shit maps. The masses don't know what is good and so they play them too. In this scenario bad maps can get played more than the good ones, even when the tools to make maps are easy to learn, in game (with co-op edit - cube engine games).

just some toughts.

Hope someone can make the next ztn, aerowalk with this anyway. need more maps.

In QW, Q2 and Q3 there were literally dozens of thousands of shitty maps. In doom there's hundreds if not thousands of practically unplayable maps.

However, mediocre works are part of the creative process and of improvement, so it's a good thing that mapping activity exists, particularly of new mappers. Plus, as you have seen in all games really, in the end the good stuff comes on top.

On a personal note, I played action quake 2 for a number of years solely because the leagues on my country had this very rare rule of that practically all maps on the server could be picked, just using common sense (dm6 and dm6 intel don't count as two separate maps, if it's unplayable then can't be picked). Cups with 400 maps :O, which of course we all knew all of them.

I'm sure that's the very reason why defrag still is played to this day. Map variety is obscene there, with hundreds of the highest quality. To an extent that variety was one of the best features of RA3, which was lost in the QL transition as less than 10% is there.

The difference between RA3 and the putrid garbage QL tried to pass off as its equivalent was ridiculous.

You say that, but the gains are there for everyone, not just the sunday-driver mappers who want to mess about with their friends. It's taken me literally hours to put together some geometry today that would've taken upwards of a week in Radiant, and all the while I've been able to drop in and out of the editor to test jumps and clipping.

Sure, depending on how much control the client gives you over the server map pool, you may see a lot more customs on servers, but you're also likely to see a lot more content from the likes of ztn too, since the sheer hassle of putting together classics like that is a lot lower.

Win-win, imo. Perhaps if those games attracted more ztn's and less back-seat mappers, the map pool wouldn't be so dire ;)

The source tools are so forgiving that it's about as easy to make a map in Hammer as it appears to be in Reflex. I've only seen a rare handful of well-made optimized maps, and even then they hardly played well. Everyone is so garbage.

hammer is notorious for its clunkiness and user unfriendliness...

I love his pants though

fun is not dependent on quality control.

"The masses don't know what is good"

Are you in Government by any chance?

he works at apple

But that's true, otherwise Q3 would be the most played FPS in the planet with million cash tournaments.

the problem with Quake is not being fun (for a host of reasons).

hardly anyone will argue it's a bad game, it clearly isn't.

its fun for me, not everyone is a raging aspie

About a tons of shitmaps...
Will be some tuornaments and will be official maplists, so maps in mapslists will be more popular etc. So next new ztn's and hubs's will be very soon!
About editor.
+ Players can easly create content (maps). It is big advantage even over next UT!
- It is still needed to update a game. For example shootmania, all maps looks the same cause there is no other blocks/textures.

good man chriz get mapping!

Check facerape.

and get me reflex alpha ;)

Ragequitters don't deserve nuffan.

R E F L E X
E
F
L
E
X

H U E H U E
U
E
H
U
E

B R B R
R
B
R

good to hear! :)

i wanna see you in this game : P

yet the only thing it's produced is the same old maps? besides, i thought the entire point of this project was not to change the game! ;)

The game is in PRE-alpha, and you're talking trying to take shots at its non-existent map pool. lol.

We're using old maps because they took 2 minutes to get permission for, 1 night to build and when we're testing gameplay changes, we can remove "doesn't know map / map sucks" from the equation entirely.

D M 6
M
6

So this seems to be as good a place as any to talk about the editor and some of our plans to support the mapping community:

We're currently pretty excited about the map editor. Despite it currently being in the most buggy, feature-bare, user unfriendly, poorly documented state it will ever be in, people are using it and loving it and telling us about how much better it is than tools like Radiant.

The current tools make it really stupidly easy to smash out the basic geometry of a map and playtest it. Although the tools will get more complex over time, this ease-of-use for basic mapping and testing will remain (and in fact will probably become even easier still when we start implementing crazy features like.. a UI ;))

About a third of our testers have had a go at building a map (many of whom have never built a map before). ninemil has had a build for about 48 hours and has already built a map that looks ready to play (and is geometrically more complex than anything we've shown ourselves).

The mapping tools will be included with every single copy of Reflex, from Pre-Alpha to Retail. They are the same tools we will be using internally so anything we make, mappers can also make.

Once the game is in more people's hands, I'd like to start a Greenlight like system for maps. We would build a bundle of community maps and push these out to servers so they were available for all players.

All of these maps would be "greybox" maps -- they'll be restricted to developer textures and basic lighting and trim (so, pretty close to the stuff we're showing now). There are a lot of people out there who would be able to build a map that was incredibly fun to play but they wouldn't be able to make it as pretty as other maps -- we want to include these people too.

It also removes "is the most pretty" bias when it comes time to vote. We want maps to be judged solely on their gameplay, not on their looks or who created them.

Users will be able to vote Yes/No on any map they've played, as well as leave feedback for the authors. If a map gets enough votes (and it will be "enough", not "the most"), we will pay the author to license their map and work with them to have it match the look of all our official maps.

It will then be released with the next update as one of our brand new official maps, ready for competitive play.

I don't think the "greybox" idea is necessary. Let the mappers map! Why would a skilled mapper let other people do the design (making it pretty)? Why would any skilled mapper want to make grey boxes, when it is exactly the designing part, that separates the bad mappers from the good?

Disagree with this. Game logic and an understanding of flow is what separates the best mappers from the mediocre. A quick browse through lvl will net you a mountain of aesthetically beautiful maps that play like absolute turd.

Authors like that are better sticking to Minecraft, and other artistic mediums. Game mapping is about creating a play environment foremost, nice scenery and some eye candy as an absolute secondary.

I don't disagree, but then again... isn't a good mapper someone who can do both? Dunno, I just think it's retarded to play in grey boxes. Get a fucking mapper and bring me some quality maps. I'm not listening to half finished music just to see if I MIGHT like it or not.

Making stuff pretty with mapping is a lot like tracing pictures. It's not hard to look out the window or at source art and literally copy what you see into a 3D editor. Anyone with a basic understanding of their toolset can do that if they're willing to put the time in, (and that's the real issue with mainstream games and a mapping tbh - few people cba.) But circular mapping, player path prediction and item layout? Nah, that's real abstract shit to nail without months of testing.

A much more admirable skill set, imo, than drawing pretty pictures. It's why I hold designers like Swelt, Scancode and Jude miles above most of the so-called professionals out there in the industry right now. I've not seen a work of art like cpm3 or q3wcp9 in a commercial product in years.

The Ultima GTR does the top gear test track in less than 1.10.
It costs less than 100k

The Bugatti Super Sport does it in 1.16 and cost more than 18 times more money than the Ultima GTR.

If you're spending 18 times more money on something that was built for the purpose of speed, surely its not much to ask to beat something that costs 18 times less?

That highlights how much easier it is to make something when you only have one goal.
becaue the Ultima GTR was built for the track only, and the Veyron was not.

You can't compare the commercial market to underground hardcore one. Quake has game play parameters which invoke those type of level designs, most commercial games don't, on top of that the market shows that levels that look aesthetically pleasing are where the money is. And that brinngs limitations into the design as the level has to adhere to architectural rules quake does not, with its random brickwork, industrial theme which allow you to focus purely on gameplay.

Nobody will ever forget the Bugati veyron, even if you hate cars, you've heard of it, you've seen it, most people have never heard of the car I just mentioned despite it being vastly superior on a price to performance ratio. And faster too around track too.

If any commercial dev teams made reflex with the game play and art you have, it would flop. It will only appeal to people who have hardcore aspirations for what a game should be.

While you're proud of attracting a few hundred players in your underground game (becausethat's all you'll get), the guys who made halo will be winning baftas and selling 10+ millions units.

As a purist I kinda agree with you, but I don't think its fair to tarnish the commercial market like you did.,Anymore than someone could slag swelt off for having poor 3D skills compared to a dedicated 3D artist.

P.S.

Anyway, fuck all this mother fucking bullshit, has anyone got any pictures of Ian Botham's willy so if I can see if those 3 shredded wheat did owt'?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/1104...viral.html

Not sure where you were going with this but the whole point is the tool set helps bridge the gap between a anybody and a dedicated 3d artist. Will a dedicated 3D artist be better then an average user? Depends, does the 3D artist know the game? I disagree with your point on the visual Vs. design layout of the map for pure game play performance. I believe you can have both of best worlds. You seem like you were talking about 2 generational games, if Q3 maps were brought up to the textures of today it still would succeed??

--Havent been to this site in 10 years forgot account/pass didn't want to pass reset just to reply to you...

Its a bridge too far.

its like saying you can make an ugly person look nice if they wear nice clothes, it doesn't work like that.

The best of both worlds is how most pro devs do it, they get the designer to do the layout in a blocky way and the artist does it all in high end 3D and that is what most consumers expect.

Better textures won't improve the majority of old quake 3 maps.
The geometry is basic and the room sizes are small from an era when FPS was a problem. Still, they will look better than what your average user of reflex map editor can do.

You won't have to play in grey boxes -- there will be plenty of full detailed maps available. Think of it as a "early access for maps" if that helps ;)

If it's really just a separated mappool where people can test new maps, that's cool.

Oh.. yeah that's absolutely the point. I might not have been very clear about that.

We'd be pushing the pack out as something 'semi-official' I guess, but that's just for convenience. Any mapper will tell you how much of a pain in the ass it can be to get your custom map on a server so that people can playtest it.

Can testify to this.

In the end, I rented a server and linked it to echbot, purely because that was the fastest way of dealing with ftp access.

Usually within a studio, you'll have a level designer (making an ugly level that plays good) and an environment artist (making ugly maps look good). There's almost never such a thing as a "mapper".

If a community member makes an ugly map that plays good, we can use that. Our artist has been a professional environment artist for over 10 years, which is experience that is going to be hard to match. We could make that ugly map as pretty as the rest of our game.

If a community member makes a pretty map that plays badly, this is useless to us and the scene for anything other than looking pretty. It won't go in the official map pool just because it looks pretty -- it also has to be fun and competitive.

There are people out there who have the skills to do both good gameplay and good looks but by that point you're talking about a tiny fraction of the community.

We'll never tell someone "You're not allowed to make this map you made look good" but we also don't want to throw out good gameplay because the author doesn't have the not-insignificant skills required to detail an environment.

How integration with popular 3d apps looks like atm?

This is totally irrelevant to the topic, but please please please don't neglect the sound in reflex. Proper positional audio with HRTFs, doppler effects etc. Quakelive is so bad in this regard.

Take note of this Newborn. left/right/up/down sound will set you apart.

This is huge

By the way ninemil: Level editing is also recorded in replays so if you wanted to, it would be trivial for you to make an hour long replay of you working on a map -- or load it in to the replay editor and have the camera slowly fly through as the map builds up around it at 20x speed.

It's slightly unfriendly at the moment since we don't yet allow recording of replays outside of actual matches but you can set sv_timelimit 3600 and ready up (even with no one else in the server). That will record a replay that goes for an hour (or until you /disconnect).

lol, really? That's kinda awesome. I may grab some footage when I'm a bit closer to finishing. I'm currently closing up the top floor before building the remaining cosmetic geometry. Uploading would mean actually registering for youtube again, but that's do-able I guess.

Would say at least another couple of days. Very pleased so far tho. It's just so damn quick to use, even for what would usually have been tiresome tasks, like adding clip brushes to the cosmetic stuff.

My god, you've thought of everything.

nice screenshots, actually like the look with the default tiles =)

Cheers, Phil. A lot of the aesthetic effect comes from having a much higher budget for the geometry, compared to the older engines I've used in the past. Everything pops out at you a lot more when you have gridlines if you can throw a decent amount of shadows around.

Slow work to build to that detail, but quite rewarding when you step back and look at it, (and it's still running at a solid 125 fps ^^)

Looking forward to chucking a playable test build out in a few days.

Im looking forward to what ninemil puts out for me to run around in!

YEAH, I like.

Good things are being said here.

Can you do a video of knocking up a room or something, just 20 mins or something, would be fun to see how it all works.

You know.... a really hilarious idea would be where you are playing a duel and there is a 3rd person BUILDING THE MAP WHILE YOU ARE DUELING ON IT!!!!!!


Imagine that shit, some nigga just starts building paths and doors and shit while you are playing. That'd be fucking hilarious.

Imagine a 2v2. 1 person from each team plays the duel and the other person builds or destroys the map to help his teammate that is in the game.

God mode 1v1. Where God can decide who wins - if he feels like it.

Could be fun.

But what also could be a different spin is a more audience based system - like a gameshow where the audience has some say in what happens and the designer has to follow along.

Make it more interesting for viewers and maybe fun for players. I think it would need some rules to make it somewhat fair on some level.

Daddy_ Mode

While reading your first line I just imagined people playing duel and the map would change mid game, not gradually like you suggest but it would flip to like a second stage of the entire map.

I also agree that would be a nice way to make new levels more interesting. This would be significantly more difficult to accomplish well. I've also thought that perhaps there should be a difficult to access switch on a map for this purpose. So it can be switched from one form to another.

it could rotate 90 or 180 degrees ;D , pretty harsh on mapping desing but that would be some interesting concept, see how you adapt.

There could even be a power up that youd choose when to rotate the map.

Now that the kickstarter has started ninemil should do a stream showing off the editor by someone who CAN map. Don't need to talk, just map!

hey i hope that doesn't go for me (((

sorry wasnt a dig, enjoyed your stream. just ninemil seems to have shown the nicest screenshot so far <3

well i just play quake, he's very professional : D

Simple and useful things changing everything. Reflex has good potential.

the editor is fantastic. ez to use (shpuld is farting out remixes of old maps pretty much daily) and the team aspect of building is amazingly fun

http://www.twitch.tv/zlive/b/572588704

please bring back ztn1111111

add export to STL functionality so that we can 3d print our maps

Ahahahahahahahahahaha